Stratics Veteran

Those of you that drop house runes to advertise your vendor mall, auction, library, or whatever… are you seeing an increase of players sitting on the house recall spot blocking incoming traffic?

These players recall in, from a standard house rune… sit and use the house sign to access vendors. It's the biggest pain, as all they would have to do is move a space to the side, but they don’t… because they either don’t know they are making a problem or they just don’t care.

I’ve been seeing this a great deal since the grand reopening of the Yew Gate Mini Mall of the Red & Purple. I kindly ask them to move and they are either nice and move just a bit or they have been nasty to me. I even had one shopper get nasty based on “You must have marked all your runes in the same spot.” What? He didn’t look like a new player.

House runes were one of the better changes added to the game in all my 9 years. You know it's a house, not a random location… the runes have the name of the house all ready to go, no need to have to add anything, plus no one can deface them. Great stuff. What I have never understood is why we can't turn shopping OFF from the house sign. This is where the system falls apart. A standard mall doesn’t hide their vendors and even still, anyone can access the vendors while standing outside the house.

I’m going to post this request to the “Ask the Devs” area, but I never saw my last thread posted, so that’s why I thought I would get some impute from other establishment owners to see if this is a 1 house problem or a problem all over.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

I'd suggest marking your runes without using the [house] rune feature. You might lose players that might choose not to use the rune, but going to lose more to the blocked house rune. I've never used house runes for Dragonstorm and we get a good amount of traffic and sales. Honestly, most players I've seen who are concerned will gate to the rune to give themselves a way out if its to a place other than the labeled vendor house.

Make sure you mark them in multiple spots in front as folks will by nature sometimes stand where they recall in.

Another suggestion if you absolutely feel you must use house runes would be to mark smaller batches of rune drops and spread them out over the banks, moongates, popular areas instead of concentrating them on high-traffic places like luna. Do this multiple times a day and it might lessen the chance of having enough back to back traffic coming in that you'll end up getting your spot blocked. Another possibility is to mark a bunch of runes outside your house, stack them in your rune drop locations and place a [House] rune on top to reassure your potential customers.

Basically, this would include prime locations (Luna gate, Luna bank, etc.) that are regularly blocked as well as all house rune locations. The Dev's could add a small tile (teleporter type?) at each location (automatically on houses) that would let you cast mark, target the tile, then target the rune to get a marked rune to that tile spot. The special thing about the tile itself is that you can not stand on it - any time someone recalls to that spot, they are automatically and randomly shuffled off to one of the surrounding tiles. Trying to step onto the tile should act just like running into a tree.

Stratics Veteran

Here’s the problem… someone is using a script or going out of their way to deface non-house runes that advertise shops. I’ve seen this for your shop runes that are normally dyed dark blue. Right? We have this big problem with “nothing better to do syndrome” when bank sitters look for anything to stir things up. If they aren't defacing them, they are just stealing them. The suggestion of making non-house runes is not the problem here, my dear.

The whole point of house runes… as I said, they can not be defaced and assure people they are recalling to an actual house vs. a death rune, like in the middle of the high spawn dungeons. People used to drop these a lot back in the days before house runes. My shopper was design with GM hiding and would hit that hide skill as soon as the recall was complete… just for that reason. This was also back when anyone could loot a body after time passed. Trust me, my friend Assia… I’m not new at this.

The question of house rune blocking is really a matter of inexperienced players not knowing how the game works, not that most are doing this by design. Are establishment house runes being blocked more then normal… from the owner’s POV… I know with runes being blocked from the Shoppers POV, I just tuck the rune to the side and hit it 30 mins later or so.

Tazar… runes are the one and only way shops outside Luna can draw in new shoppers. Gates… rarely help as most banksitters are unattended. We can not depend on any staff doing anything to help the situation… because, yeah… it would be wonderful IF we had little beacons on pedestals at the West Brit Bank for historical shops that are older then 5 years, but it's not happening. As is, some of us aren't even allowed town banners… and they are talking about making a link as you suggested, that sure wont help my mall (R&PMM) or anyone out of reach of a public moongate. With Assia’s shop and my Yew Gate Mall… they aren’t far away from a public moongate, but new shoppers wouldn’t know that.

Shops I know and like… add to my shopping books, I will often remark a rune just as I would keep a rune to my own houses that no one blocks.

Stratics Veteran

I know it might not be the answer you are looking for, but as a resourceful vendor shop owner, you can adapt and overcome. It may not be fair that you have to but... what are the alternatives? to wait for a programming change? Especially not fair because you seem to have a legitimate concern with the house rune blocking.

So how about this for a new technique,
Mailboxes! Drop a rune, a book with some of your best priced deals and an explanation (think mail-order catalog style) and a small gift (couple of repair deeds, a small pack of recalls, something useful that reflects your store, or even a little gold for their first purchase) and maybe even an in-game map of the area with your house pinned on it, all in a pouch and then drop it in some mailboxes of potential customers. You could even give them a way to "opt out" of any future communication by customizing the book per house and telling them to return it to your mailbox if they would rather not be bothered with such advertisement.

Just thinking outside the box here...might need some work on the total idea.
What would it resolve, one-no rune littering, two-no one defacing or stealing your runes, three-with natural curiosity and with the gift and even the opt out, might be tough to resist the sales pitch.

Also what if some of us out of the way vendors bound together and made a "mail order" catalog and delivery service etc. etc.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

I didn't mean to sound as if I was suggesting you were inexperienced to managing a mall, that was certainly not my intention. However, if you knew my history, you'd understand I also have a decent amount of experience with managing successful vendor malls as well. *smiles* My intention was to make suggestions that might help you overcome what seemed to be frustrating you based on my experience. It would seem I misunderstood the intention of your original post and I apologize.

In my opinion...
Part of managing a successful mall unfortunately is dealing with folks who are gonna give you grief whether out of boredom, malevolence or ignorance. Its just part of the package. Mall owners from over the last decade have always had their share of headaches. I still remember having to wait sometimes an hour a couple times a week for a GM to remove vendors for me who weren't stocking or had inappropriate items on them. *shudders*

Do my runes get renamed? Yep, sometimes they do.
Do folks pick up the runes and remark or sell them? Yep, they do.
Do those things hinder my current shop's success? Not really.

There are absolutely ways around the irritation. Would it be nice if runes could not be blocked? It certainly wouldn't hurt anything.

My apologies, once again, if I offended. Good luck with your suggestion to the Devs and I hope that your shop continues to thrive. *smiles*

~ Assia Penryn

P.S. Excellent suggestion Tully. I've done something similar although on a rather small scale due to RL time constraints. Way to think outside the box! *applauds*

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